He began to wonder if it would be possible to drag himself across the floor to that south window, and so to lie down for a while with his head in the tiny balcony beyond—his eyes turned to the blue sky. Astir with the new thought he sat up in bed and carefully swung his feet out till they hung to the floor. The wound in the left leg smarted and burnt, but not too severely, and with slow pains Ste. Marie stood up. He almost cried out when he discovered that it could be done quite easily. He essayed to walk and he was a little weak, but by no means helpless. He found that it gave him pain to raise his left leg in the ordinary action of walking, or to bend that knee, but he could get about well enough by dragging the injured member beside him, for when it was straight it supported him without protest.
He took his pillows across to the window and disposed them there, for it was a French window opening to the floor, and the level of the little balcony outside was but a few inches above the level of the room. Then the desire seized him to make a tour of his prison walls. He went first to the closet where he had seen his clothes hanging, and they were still there. He felt in the pockets and withdrew his little English pig-skin sovereign purse. It had not been tampered with, and he gave an exclamation of relief over that, for he might later on have use for money. There were eight louis in it, each in its little separate compartment, and in another pocket he found a fifty-franc note and some silver. He went to the two east windows and looked out. The trees stood thick together on that side of the house, but between two of them he could see the park wall fifty yards away. He glanced down, and the side of the house was covered thick with the ivy which had given the place its name, but there was no water pipe near nor any other thing which seemed to offer foot or hand hold—unless perhaps the ivy might prove strong enough to bear a man's weight. Ste. Marie made a mental note to look into that when he was a little stronger, and turned back to the south window, where he had disposed his pillows.
The unaccustomed activity was making his wound smart and prickle, and he lay down at once, with head and shoulders in the open air; and, out of the warm and golden sunshine and the emerald shade, the breath of summer came to him and wrapped him round with sweetness and pillowed him upon its fragrant breast.
He became aware, after a long time, of voices below, and turned upon his elbows to look. The ivy had clambered upon and partly covered the iron grille of the little balcony and he could observe without being seen. Young Arthur Benham and Coira O'Hara had come out of the door of the house, and they stood upon the raised and paved terrace which ran the width of the façade, and seemed to hesitate as to the direction they should take. Ste. Marie heard the girl say—
"It's cooler here in the shade of the house," and, after a moment, the two came along the shady terrace, whose outer margin was set at intervals with stained and discoloured marble nymphs upon pedestals, and, between the nymphs, with moss-grown stone benches. They halted before a bench upon which, earlier in the day, a rug had been spread out to dry in the sun and had been forgotten, and, after a moment's further hesitation, they sat down upon it. Their faces were turned towards the house and every word that they spoke mounted in that still air clear and distinct to the ears of the man above.
Ste. Marie wriggled back into the room and sat up to consider. The thought of deliberately listening to a conversation not meant for him sent a hot flush to his cheeks. He told himself that it could not be done, and that there was an end to the matter. Whatever might hang upon it it could not be asked of him that he should stoop to dishonour. But at that the heavy and grave responsibility which really did hang upon him and upon his actions came before his mind's eyes and loomed there mountainous. The fate of this foolish boy, who was set round with thieves and adventurers—even though his eyes were open and he knew where he stood—that came to Ste. Marie and confronted him: and the picture of a bitter old man who was dying of grief came to him: and a mother's face: and hers. There could be no dishonour in the face of all this, only a duty very clear and plain. He crept back to his place, his arms folded beneath him as he lay, his eyes at the thin screen of ivy which cloaked the balcony grille.
Young Arthur Benham appeared to be giving tongue to a rather sharp attack of homesickness. It may be that long confinement within the walls of La Lierre was beginning to try him somewhat.
"Mind you," he declared, as Ste. Marie's ears came once more within range, "mind you, I'm not saying that Paris hasn't got its points. It has. Oh yes! And so has London, and so has Ostend, and so has Monte Carlo—Verree much so!—I like Paris. I like the theatres and the vaudeville shows in the Champs Elysées, and I like Longchamps. I like the boys who hang around Henry's bar. They're good sports, all right, all right! But, by Golly, I want to go home! Put me off at the corner of Forty-second Street and Broadway and I'll ask no more. Set me down at seven p.m. right there on the corner outside the Knickerbocker, for that's where I would live and die." There came into the lad's somewhat strident voice a softness that was almost pathetic.
"You don't know Broadway, Coira, do you? Nix! of course not. Little girl, it's the one, one street of all this large world. It's the equator that runs north and south instead of east and west. It's a long bright gay live wire, that's what Broadway is. And I give you my word of honour like a little man that it—is—not—slow. No indeed! When I was there last it was being called the Gay White Way. It is not called the Gay White Way now. It has had forty other new good names since then, and I don't know what they are, but I do know that it is forever gay, and that the electric signs are still blazing all along the street, and the street cars are still killing people in the good old fashion, and the newsboys are still dodging under the automobiles to sell you a Woild or a Choinal or, if it's after twelve at night, a Morning Telegraph. Coira, my girl, standing on that corner after dark you can see the electric signs of fifteen theatres, no one of them more than five minutes' walk away, and just round the corner there are more.
"I want to go home! I want to take one large unparalleled leap from here and come down at the corner I told you about. D'you know what I'd do? We'll say it's seven p.m. and beginning to get dark. I'd dive into the Knickerbocker (that's the hotel that the bright and happy people go to for dinner or supper), and I'd engage a table up on the terrace. Then I'd telephone to a little friend of mine, whose name is Doe—John Doe—and in about ten minutes he'd have left the crowd he was standing in line with and he'd come galloping up that glad to see me you'd cry to watch him. We'd go up on the terrace, where the potted palms grow, for our dinner, and the tables all around us would be full of people that would know Johnnie Doe and me, and they'd all make us drink drinks and tell us how glad they were to see us aboard again.